


Vigilance Rewarded

by glacis



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-28
Updated: 2010-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:42:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape has a secret and Moody is determined to discover it (set during the sweep of Death Eaters at the time of the Potters' deaths).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigilance Rewarded

Vigilance Rewarded, by seeker.  Written for the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest (Snape/Moody pairing)

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He'd thought he knew what fear was. Being Voldemort's minion, eyes wide open and anger fueling his heart, he'd learnt quickly enough that it wasn't all power and vengeance and getting a bit of his own back. Every last petty motivation he'd ever felt had been ripped out of him and paraded in front of his eyes, until he knew his own weaknesses intimately.

How else would he know how to prey upon another's?

But this, this was different. Several months before, he'd finally had the sense and the nerve to do what he should have done at the beginning, and he'd gone to Dumbledore. The old wizard's eyes had burned through him, but he'd eventually made a decision. Some would say it was to give Severus Snape a second chance.

Snape knew better.

He was being punished, being used, and he had no one to blame but himself for it. Unfortunately, no one other than Dumbledore knew the truth, and when things had gone to hell in a hand basket and the Dark Lord had hit a wall he couldn't crack with the Potter infant, Snape had been swept up with everyone else in the Aurors' net.

So there he was, in the lowest chambers of Azkaban, tied to an iron chair with magical rope, waiting to see if Dumbledore would be able to come through for him. Or if he would die here, broken and maddened, rotting in the darkness.

He didn't need any help coming up with hopeless scenarios. He'd always had a vivid imagination, and since becoming a Death Eater eight years before, his life experiences had done naught but give form and substance to his nightmares. Only fitting, in its way, as well, since he'd given form and substance to a few others' nightmares in his time.

The door cracked open against the stone wall, causing him to jump despite his best intentions. The lanky figure that walked in the door lightened his heart, though logically the sight of Mad Eye Moody should have caused him wet his pants. But Moody was Dumbledore's friend, and if anyone would listen to the old wizard, it was Moody. It must be a sign that things were finally going Snape's way. That tiny spark of hope allowed him to lift his head and watch calmly as Moody clumped over to him.

"You're a right one, you are," Moody growled, and Snape felt the first crackle of ice in the pit of his stomach. "Constant vigilance, I always say, you never can tell. Never can know."

His voice died off as he came to a halt in front of Snape, staring down at him. One beady eye glared at him balefully, while the larger orb, wide and blue and disorienting, rolled first to the side, then around to the top, before sliding down to pin Snape in place.

"Ye're hiding something, boy," Moody growled softly. Snape felt his skin start to crawl. Something was wrong. "And I mean to find out what it is."

Very wrong. One gnarled hand reached out and clutched Snape's hair, dragging his head back so that Moody could look directly down into his eyes. For a split second, Snape felt transparent, as if Moody could look down into his splintered soul and read every fractured piece. He opened his mouth to ask about Dumbledore, then snapped his jaw shut so hard he bit the tip of his tongue, tasting blood.

He didn't dare. Either Moody knew, or he didn't. If he knew, either he believed Dumbledore, or he didn't. There wasn't a bloody thing Snape could about it either way, but one lesson he'd learnt early and well was that walls had ears. He had no option but to keep his tongue still and his secrets his own. No matter how hard Moody probed.

"Constant," Moody hissed close to his face, the sibilants puffing air against Snape's skin. He would have flinched if he'd been able, but Moody's hand twined at his scalp kept him still. The mad Auror leaned closer still, until the warmth of his breath seared Snape's cheek. "Watchfulness," he whispered, the word echoing in Snape's head.

The weathered cheek touched his own, and the stone dungeon disappeared. Another place, as dark if not darker than the hole in the prison, filled with flame that couldn't penetrate the shadows the way the screams of the tortured did. Snape recognized it, knew it was the first working gathering of Death Eaters he'd attended, as a callow youth of sixteen.

He'd kept his composure, delivered the potions he'd so carefully prepared, and bit back the bile surging in his throat as he watched his friend and mentor Lucius dip his fingers into a Muggle boy's blood and use it to paint symbols of power on his naked body before gutting the boy, finally putting an end to the agonized keening coming from the boy's throat.

Lucius, handing the knife to Snape, after he'd flayed the skin from the corpse. Himself, staring down at the blood caking the handle, feeling it seep into his skin. Marking him in a way the Dark Mark itself couldn't. Because he hadn't turned away.

He'd leaned down and helped. He'd touched a fingertip to his lips, and licked copper and pain and power from it. He'd never known such power existed.

Pain arced through him, and he dimly heard Moody's voice ranting in his ear. The words made no sense, as deeply enmeshed as he was in his memories. After the first taste of blood, he'd vomited for hours, in a field some way from the school where no one would know. His training began in earnest after that night, as Voldemort grew to know him, shredded Snape and put him back together again in the way best suited to his dark ends.

Not all the cracks had come together quite the way Voldemort expected, though he never knew. Into those cracks crept doubt, even as Snape grew adept at torture, even as his potions were ever more fine-tuned to break man or wizard with less and less blood, more and more finesse. Until the day came when he truly stoppered death in a bottle, and the wizard he tortured begged to drink of it.

Once drunk, the tormented soul departed, and the doubt crashed through. That night, Snape crept in to Dumbledore's rooms, and laid bare what was left of his soul. Only to be sent back to the darkness, with a secret so deeply scored there it could never be admitted, for if Voldemort knew Snape was a spy, hell would not be far enough to run.

In the nearly two years since, Snape had done what was needed to remain in the perceived service of the dark. But he hadn't killed another wizard, hadn't tortured another Muggle, hadn't put knife to flesh or wand to skin of another living sentient being. Voldemort noticed, of course, and it diminished his effectiveness, but the Dark Lord knew of Snape's growing distaste for murder. If he suspected Snape's turning, he made no sign.

Just as Snape gave no sign, now, as Moody ruthlessly sifted through every one of the memories he'd fought so hard to suppress. Screams beat against the sides of his head, inside and out, from those he'd damaged and from his own throat at Moody ripping through his mind. Blood soaked his hands, his robes, his skin until he dripped with it; broken minds, broken bodies, death and pain well past the point of desired death crushed him under the weight of his memories.

Beneath the suffocating stone of his past, the dim light of hope Dumbledore held out crouched, hiding every evidence of shine for fear Moody ... Lucius ... Voldemort would find it.

The craggy face with the mad eyes, both mundane and magical, melted in front of his tearing gaze, until it was a visage more feared and more hated, more revered and more needed, than any other. Voldemort reached out to him, lifted him from the blood, and whispered in his ear.

"Constant vigilance, my dear boy," it hissed. "You must ever be on the watch. Tell me what you see."

He would not.

He opened his mouth. Instead of words, he spat blood at his tormentor. Voldemort would no more have the truth from him than Moody would. The back-handed blow that rocked his head back did him a favor, by shaking him out of the endless loop of horror and settling him back into the present.

Not that it was much improvement.

Moody was straddling him now, hands burrowing under his robes to trace symbols on his skin, catching the trembling shivers and pulling the truth from Snape through them. His head was forward, his face near buried in Snape's neck, as he fought to find the truth Snape fought equally hard to hide.

In other circumstances it would have been amusing. The truth sought and the truth hidden were such very different truths. But nothing was funny when all he could see was death and all he could hear was agony. And his body was reacting the way it had been taught, and all he wanted to do was curl up and die.

A hitch in his torturer's breath made it known his erection was discovered, and Snape would have closed his eyes if he'd thought it would do any good. Knowing it wouldn't, having been both victim and perpetrator in this little game, he used it to his advantage as much as possible. Cunning, distraction and misdirection were the weapons of his House and of his choice, and with his strength rapidly failing, he used them.

Shifting his hips as much as the ropes would allow, Snape pushed himself roughly against Moody's thigh, aiming for his prick. The ropes had more give than he expected, from his earlier thrashing whilst caught in the web of memory, and his target was easy to find.

It appeared Moody had the same reaction to meting out torture, albeit in the guise of lawful questioning, as Snape himself had.

The first touch of hardness against hardness did precisely what Snape hoped. Moody's breath caught and the magical eye rolled up in his skull, for all the world as if trying to catch someone sneaking up behind him. His normal eye winced, then snapped open to fix on Snape's face again, but this time his gaze caught on Snape's mouth, not making it all the way to his eyes. Snape licked his lips.

Another hitch in the breathing, then a muttered, "Sneaky, tricky, Slytherin bastard," before Moody leaned down and bit him. Blood again, that coppery taste so familiar to him, this time from his own lips, and Moody was the one licking it up. The hands that had been seeking answers through his skin now imposed demands, sliding further under his robes to ring his prick and pull angrily at it.

Not bothering to smother the cries Moody drew from him, Snape fought to kiss back as hard as he was kissed. Their faces ground together, more mauling than kissing one another. Pain and well-trained endorphins crashed through Snape as he came, flooding Moody's hand, spasming helplessly against the hold of the Auror and the ropes biting into him.

A growled charm, and the ropes moved, loosening then tightening again, this time with his knees tied up by his shoulders, with several inches of space between the seat and his body. Moody shifted forward, sliding his arse under Snape's body, sitting backward on the chair, hastily coating his prick with Snape's own come before shoving it deep in Snape's arse.

Another ripping pain, but this one he could handle, and he did. As Moody pumped into him, jolting his body against the ropes, hands digging bruises into the backs of his thighs, hips cramping from the awkward position, Snape used the few moments of physical distraction to seal up the breaches in his mental walls. By the time Moody grunted and came inside him, Snape's defenses were once again secure.

No amount of blood, or memory, or guilt, could break them down again.

Moody pulled out as abruptly as he'd entered, leaving Snape hanging there, spunk and blood and sweat dripping from his gaping arsehole onto the seat below. His muscles cramped, his limbs went numb as the ropes cut into him, and still Moody stood there and stared at him.

Raising his head with the last of his strength, Snape glared up at Moody. "Well?" he finally rasped. Moody smiled at him. It was a frightening expression.

"Maybe you'll do," he growled under his breath, then pointed his wand at the ropes.

Snape landed with a painful thump as the ropes slackened, his deadened arms and legs falling to the side as he slumped, the picture of a marionette with its strings cut. He couldn't hold back the groan of pain, from his pulverized arse to the knives stabbing his extremities as circulation was sluggishly restored.

A hand speared his hair again, dragging his head up. Moody touched the blood dripping from Snape's split and bitten lip with his free hand, and nodded. "Constant vigilance," he said again, and this time it sounded like a warning. In that instant Snape knew.

Dumbledore had told Moody the truth. Moody had believed him. And it hadn't made a whit of difference. Snape didn't know if it had been a test, a bluff, or Moody simply giving him a taste of his own medicine for his own twisted pleasure. Moody nodded once, then turned and left him there. An hour or a week later, time didn't run right in Azkaban, he was dragged from his cell and brought to tribunal. Dumbledore stood for him.

It was the least he could do.

Fourteen years later, when Alastor Moody came to Hogwarts, Snape still didn't know Moody's motives. He didn't get close enough to find out. And when they uncovered the new truth, that the man pretending to be Moody wasn't, he finally understood what the madman had been trying to tell him.

Constant vigilance, close examination, and facing the truths too bloody to face, were the only way evil would ever be defeated.

Snape still wanted to lock him back in the trunk. Because for the first time since he'd looked up in that dungeon in Azkaban and seen Moody walk in, he saw his own fear written in Moody's face.

He liked it.

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end


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